TEDx talks

Ilana Ben-Ari gives a live demo of her toy for the visually impaired and discusses opportunities for using toys as tools for communication.

TEDxConcordia

Founder and Lead Designer, Ilana Ben-Ari, talks about the history of the Empathy & Creative Dialogue toy as a navigational aid designed with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, hinting at its redesign as a tool for empathic learning for any age and ability.

Ilana is an award-winning product designer with over 6 years experience, having worked in Montreal, Toronto, London (UK), and Helsinki. Her designs have been shown and sold internationally, including a chair shaped like a s'more which her grandmother insists was her finest work.

At TEDx Concordia 2011, she demonstrated her Connexions Toy — originally designed for visually impaired children to play with their sighted classmates. The toy has now been re-imagined as a tool to develop empathy and creative dialogue, for people of varying ages and abilities. With a breadth of knowledge in design, social innovation and collaboration --and having realized her career as a karaoke DJ had officially peaked-- she now runs her own start-up, Twenty One Toys. Using toys and play as tools for social change, Ilana is leading the way for learners of all ages to develop the key 21st-century skills: Innovation, Creativity, Empathy, Collaboration and Problem Solving.

TEDxYouth

"Why, in school, do we stop playing after kindergarten?" This is the question posed by Ilana Ben-Ari in this TEDxYouth talk on the need for more play in our classrooms, not just for fun, but for serious discussions around what creativity, collaboration, empathy and failure mean.